I liked the movie very much, but I find Fulford’s arguments to be intriguing. He sees the two lead characters of the movie to epitomize the “ugly Americans” abroad with a sense of superiority and shameless ignorance. He builds convincing arguments, and I must agree with him on all. Many of the jokes rely heavily on the stereotypes of Japanese, and seem to parade modern Japanese culture as something ridiculous. Fulford goes as far as to imply that the movie is racist in some ways.

Many scenes in the film do support this argument. For instance, Bob and Charlotte make fun of the inability of the Japanese people to distinguish R’s and L’s. If you consider the situation in reverse, you could perhaps see how offensive this might be to some. Imagine a situation where you as an American meet some Japanese people here in the US. Say, you know a little bit of Japanese language. In order to convey your respect to them, you take the risk of appearing ridiculous by speaking to them in Japanese. Imagine how you would feel if the Japanese people made fun of your poor pronunciation.

Another scene at a Japanese restaurant, Bob takes advantage of the fact that the Japanese chef cannot understand English. He not only tells Charlotte to take one of her shoes off, but also yells condescendingly at the chef, something to the effect of, “What’s with that serious face?” Imagine at 21 Club, or at any formal restaurants here in the US, a Japanese couple is talking loudly and obnoxiously in Japanese. She takes one of her shoes off in front of a waiter. The Japanese man starts yelling at the waiter in Japanese. You could see how offensive this might be to many people. The ironic thing here is that in both scenarios, Americans would see nothing wrong with themselves. In the latter case, they would simply see Japanese people to be rude and crass. They would not see the act to be ridiculing the Americans.

Americans are often criticized for blaming everyone but themselves. These scenes are vivid examples of this. It does not occur to Bob and Charlotte to learn a word or two of Japanese, but they have the audacity to make fun of the Japanese for their inability to distinguish R’s and L’s. When an American trips on a sidewalk, the first thing he/she does is to blame the sidewalk and sue the city. Most Japanese people would question themselves first, and they would never even entertain the idea of suing the city, because suing the city means to sue their fellow citizens.

This is true with most Eastern countries. The East is more self-critical and introspective than the West in most situations. Most easterners are aware when they are made fun of, looked down on, pushed around, and criticized, but they have the wisdom not to retaliate because they understand that not all problems in life can be solved by attacking or fighting back. They know not to fight ridicule with ridicule. They know that complaining about it would not lead anywhere. They know that it is wiser to put the same energy in something more positive. The Western admirers of the East understand this well, and this is a big part of why they are drawn to Eastern cultures. The fact that people like Bob, Charlotte, and Sofia Coppola do not understand this, is no one’s loss but their own. As soon as we ask her to understand the beauty of Eastern culture, we are giving her more credit than she deserves.

You would not be disappointed if a junkie on the street didn’t understand something about you, but you would be disappointed if someone more powerful than you are didn’t. By asking that person to understand you, you are acknowledging and reinforcing that person’s power. By the same token, the Japanese people do not need Sofia Coppola to understand their culture. Criticizing her and asking her to understand them, would only empower her further. She does not have to understand something she is not interested in. Just as I know virtually nothing about sailing, farming, Latin language, or engineering, it is not her responsibility to know anything about Japanese culture. Why should she? She might be racist to a degree, but everyone is. I do not think that I am in a position to claim that she is more so than I am.

From this perspective, I watched the movie. I was perfectly aware of her exploitations of Japanese stereotypes, but I didn’t care about it so much because the movie really had nothing to do with Japan or Japanese culture. It is merely incidental that it took place in Japan; it could have been anywhere exotic: Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Kazakhstan, or even Russia. This movie is neither about a specific culture nor about cultural differences. It is about feelings of alienation, loss, loneliness, isolation, and passion. It is about lost souls rediscovering what it is like to feel something for real. While all the criticisms of cultural exploitation are valid, to see the movie only from that angle is skewed and narrow-minded. The film is not worthless. It has value elsewhere in a different dimension. It could have taken place in France or Brazil, but it would not have been as effective. If you were to create the greatest contrast possible, Japan is certainly one of the best places to pick.

In this sense, the film actually had a profound effect on me. It reminded me of how I felt when I first came to New York, not knowing a single soul in this big city. For a long time, I was unable to make any friends or even converse with anyone. That feeling of total isolation, in retrospect, appears so beautiful that part of me wants to feel it again. When you are in your own city, the strangers around you are not as strange as you might think. You can still guess what their lives are like, whom they might look up to, what kind of music they might listen to, what kind of job they might have, how much money they might be making, etc.. You unconsciously compare yourself to them. That is, they are not total strangers; you know them to a degree. In many ways, they are playing the same game you are playing. When you go to an utterly foreign country, people around you are truly strange. You have no connection whatsoever with them. You feel completely alone in the world. In this type of context, you can relate to someone whom you might think is a total stranger at home.

You can go to a foreign country for a variety of reasons. It does not always have to be about learning a different culture. You could use the context to learn something about yourself. To Bob and Charlotte, Japan was merely a different background that allowed them to see themselves for what they were, albeit unintentionally. Different situations bring out different aspects of yourself. Traveling to a different country is an effective way to achieve this. The problem with Bob and Charlotte was that they did this disrespectfully. There is no need to be disrespectful of other cultures in order to find something about yourself, but this is consistent with the characters in the film. If they were actually self-critical, they would not be feeling so alienated. The cause of alienation, above all, is lack of knowledge about yourself. The more critical of yourself you are, the less alienated you become. Both Bob and Charlotte lived their lives by blaming everyone but themselves, and that is why they are feeling so lost.

I am quite certain that both Fulford and I are reading into the film more than what Sofia Coppola intended. Often the value of art is to provoke discussion, but in this case, she cannot take credit for provoking Fulford’s criticism, because it is quite clear that Sofia Coppola knows nothing of Japanese culture, nor does she intend to know anything about it (her indifference is clearly conveyed in the movie). This is what “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” truly means. A painting of an ocean might remind me of a beautiful moment I had in my life, in which case, the beauty is in me, projected onto the painting, independent of the intention of the artist. “Lost in Translation” is an impressionistic film that allows for this type of projection. Though she may not have the insight to see the beauty that I am seeing in the film, it is still beautiful to me.

Addendum (12/3/03):

Below is a further attempt to dispel the confusion.

Let’s separate “story” from “plot”. Let’s define “story” to be the artistic substance, and “plot” to be the logical structure that gives the substance a form. You could have a film with nothing but plot, where all sorts of twists and turns happen, but tells nothing emotionally compelling. A common experience one would have with a plot without a story is that the second time you see it, you are bored out of your mind, because you already know the plot, and because it has nothing else to offer. You can read a good story many times over without getting bored, even though you know the plot by heart.

The confusion with “Lost in Translation” is that these two different aspects of the film are getting mixed up in various criticisms. As I said in my essay, I liked the movie very much. By that, I mean I liked the “story”. The fact that it took place in Japan is part of the “plot”, and it was not absolutely necessary, and it was rather irrelevant to the “story.”

I appreciated the “story” of the film, but not the “plot”. In the end, “story” is more important than “plot”, but the plot of the movie reflects Sofia Coppola’s naive understanding of Japan. She is equivalent to a science fiction writer who knows nothing about science. Some people can pull it off authentically, but most people cannot. Sofia Coppola certainly did not. Her knowledge of Japan consists of nothing but stereotypes. Even the scenes where Charlotte is presumably paying respect to Japanese culture (flower arrangement and witnessing of Japanese wedding), what Coppla depicted was stereotypical fetishism of Eastern mysticism. If you know Japanese culture well, those scenes would make you cringe with embarrassment for Coppola.

In order to construct a plot that matches the depth of the “story”, she should have picked a culture she knew better. If you can ignore these cringy moments, the actual “story” of the movie is quite good. In and of itself, I do not have any issues with the characters being disrespectful Americans. As I said above, it is perfectly consistent as far as the “story” is concerned.

I have no issues with characters of a movie being a racist, a sexist, homo-phobic, or anything else politically incorrect, but there is a difference between when a racist director creates a movie with a racist protagonist, and when an anti-racist director makes such a movie.

I would not call Sofia Coppla a racist, but she certainly does not have much understanding of Japanese culture. Again, there is a difference between a director with an in-depth understanding of Japanese culture making a film that makes fun of Japan, and a director with no substantial knowledge of Japanese culture making such a film. The latter can be quite annoying, and itself disrespectful.

Imagine a French director who knows nothing about American culture making a film that depicts all Americans to be arrogant and stupid. I could appreciate it if the director has a deep understanding of American culture, and still decided to depict Americans that way. But if he knows nothing about American culture, it is disrespectful to be making fun of something that he knows nothing about. By the same token, I do not feel that Sofia Coppla knows enough about Japanese culture to be making fun of it.

Subscribe

Against Branding — Design and Conflict on Design Observer raises an interesting question but is not argued well. With his critique of Amnesty International posters, his issue appears to be consistency or homogeneity of the looks. He says, “While I’m not claiming that there’s no room for consistency in visual identity design, isn’t the uncritical application of any communications methodology asking for trouble?”

If consistency per se is not the problem, he needs to explain why the rebranded versions are “uncritical.” He fails to explain the relationship between consistency and lack of critical analysis. They are not necessarily related. As a branding strategy, it’s possible to deliberately employ inconsistency while being uncritical, and it’s also possible to be consistent while being critical.

His bigger issue appears to be the socio-economic class. Unfortunately here too, he doesn’t explain how exactly branding contributes or perpetuates the problem. The mechanism is not at all clear in his arguments.

For instance, he uses São Paulo as proof that “removing these signs helped reveal the stark poverty of the favelas (urban slums).” But how? He doesn’t explain. In fact, his claim goes counter to his quoting of Barthes. Barthes’ point isn’t that “myths” veil or hide “class division”, but that they normalize it. That is, manipulative branding or advertising can turn a problem into an identity to be embraced. It does not veil or hide “the stark poverty”; it presents the poverty ubiquitously in order to normalize it. It does the opposite of veiling.

In this sense, the aspect of Donald Trump’s branding that needs a critical analysis is not his vodka but his use of baseball caps during the presidential campaign. Baseball cap is a symbol of the rural working class. The 1-percenters like Trump do not wear baseball caps. It was part of the effort to turn the socio-economic plight into an identity, to normalize the income inequality. This is where Barthes’ analysis of myth becomes relevant.

Between the branding strategies used by Trump and Clinton, the latter was decidedly more “corporate.” Take a look at Trump’s baseball cap; it’s decidedly un-corporate. It’s set in a generic serif font and is barely designed. But I would bet that it was a strategic decision NOT to design it well, to keep it looking lowbrow. Clinton’s branding, designed by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, was much more corporate, but its sophistication is also a signifier for the urban elitism that the rural working class detests. Trump’s campaign understood this, and Clinton’s didn’t. In one interview I saw, Michael Moore said he suggested making baseball caps to Clinton’s campaign early on but they ridiculed his idea. He said he realized how out of touch they were with the rural working class then.

What this tells us is that whether your branding campaign looks consistent and corporate has nothing to do with whether you are being critical. Clinton’s campaign was out of touch with the people they claim to fight for. If they are not even aware of their plights, how could they be critical in the first place? Trump’s campaign was at least in touch with their people, and knew how to exploit it using deliberately unsophisticated, un-corporate branding strategies.

For most people, “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley” is what Facebook is. It’s a system to receive daily affirmations, to confirm their own biases, to congratulate one another. It’s not a platform where you challenge the ideas of others and others challenge yours. It’s not a peer review system.

Given what we have learned since the election, I’m now willing to say that Trump is preferable to Clinton (as Zizek declared before the election). It’s a high cost but it’s better than eight more years of oppressing the rural working class and suppressing their anger and despair. The outcome of that after eight more years would have been a lot worse.

I saw the problem before the election but had no clue how bad it was. When I wrote the articles explaining why the rural working class would vote for Trump, I was shocked by the reactions I received from my friends. They did not see it at all. Not only that; they became angry at me for writing them. In other words, the Left’s unawareness of the problem was not just lack of curiosity or a result of living in a bubble; it was ideological ignorance. That is, they felt they SHOULD ignore the plight of the rural working class. It was an ideological war against the rural values. Clinton’s use of the word “deplorables” is reflective of this. Had Clinton been elected, this war, which the Left was dominating, would have continued for another eight years. The problem Richard Rorty saw in the 90s would have devasted the entire middle class by then, both rural and urban. It would have been everyone’s problem, except for the top 0.1%.

The key contributing factor, which was not often talked about in this election cycle, is the speed of the technological evolution. The reason why startups are so popular is because technology is super-effective and efficient in amassing the wealth for the very few. Its ability to “scale” the profit without raising the cost is almost infinite. The first group of people to see the consequences of this scary efficiency was the rural whites. Those in the lower class, I don’t think, saw the decline because they were already at the bottom, as low as anyone could go without dying.

The income disparity is the biggest problem we are seeing globally. All the other problems we are seeing, like racism and xenophobia, are merely the symptoms of this main problem. Fighting racism is like taking an aspirin to remove the symptoms of the illness without attending to the cause.

According to this study, corporate programs designed to reduce managerial bias through education like diversity training had an overall negative impact: a 7 percent decline in the odds for black women to get managerial positions and an 8 percent decline in the odds for black men.

If a well-meaning effort to combat racism can have a negative impact, what do you think verbally attacking your political opponents of being racists would do? Let’s think about this before we further contribute to racism.

The fact that virtually all entertainers of all colors and creeds support the Democrats tells us how in touch they are with the American ideals. The fact that they lost the election despite all their emotional power tells us how out of touch they are with the American reality.

This election inspired me to reach out to people with a greater diversity of values; religious, political, national, regional, educational, socio-economic, professional, etc.. Our culture has been too focused on diversity in terms of how we look and has neglected our inner differences. We let “diversity” become a mere buzzword. Because we cannot see our values, we’ve conveniently excused our prejudices.

Through the Internet, we are able to create highly customized bubbles of our own. Our Facebook timelines are great representations of them. Each of our timelines is a unique bubble that caters to our needs and desires. We can judge the people outside of our bubbles all we want without the risk of being judged by them. This isolation, comfort, and safety magnify our fears about the world outside of our bubbles. Our tolerance for different values has weakened to an alarming level.

In our modern societies, the fear and anger towards the other will likely grow over time because of these technologies.

The best way to overcome our fear is to know more about it. “Ignorance” is not lack of knowledge—we cannot know everything—but judging without the willingness to know.

Ignorance permeated both sides of the political spectrum in this election. Both sides feared one another, yet made little to no effort to know one another. They let themselves be so overwhelmed with the fear of the other that they just shut down, and made no effort to reach out to the other side.

The political scientist interviewed in this article did the right thing. For about a decade, she traveled back and forth to rural towns in order to understand “why they feel the way they feel, why they vote the way they vote.” This article was published on Election Day before the result came out, but I think Trump’s victory lends further credibility to her theory.

There is a vast divide between the rural USA and the urban USA. We no longer understand one another. Ugly bigotry actually exists on both sides. The liberals are lucky because there is no shameful term like “racism” to label their own version. The closest word is perhaps “elitism.”

I don’t know why the media endorses presidential candidates. Once you publicly declare your position, you would naturally start defending your position. Gradually everything you say will be positional. Positional debates are not constructive.

I’m not saying that the media should not have an “editorial” department; in fact, I believe they should. There are theories, hypotheses, and speculations that cannot be backed up by facts. I think this is the hole that bloggers filled. I noticed this during the financial crisis of 2008. Because the news media were limited to reporting what can be backed up by facts and avoid making speculations, I turned to bloggers for more relevant information and their expert interpretations of what was happening.

Theories, hypotheses, and speculations do not have to be positional. The media could make their best guesses at what Henry Paulson was thinking during the crisis, and they wouldn’t be taking any sides. It’s still value-neutral. They could debate about the potential impact of Trump’s immigration policies without making a value judgment, simply speculate what they think will happen.

Speculation is often looked at as a bad thing but we all need to speculate to some degree to prepare ourselves for the future, and the media play an important role in that. They cannot provide just facts. Their audience also need structural frameworks to make their own judgment. Facts alone are not useful unless the reader is an expert on the subject. It’s like supplying random ingredients without teaching them the basic skills of cooking. But they don’t need to tell the readers that lasagna is better than ziti. Endorsing a presidential candidate is as absurd as declaring which religion is the best.

If they are going to claim that they are unbiased and objective, they need to do a much better job at being unbiased. Otherwise, they need to declare themselves to be a biased media outlet and state their bias up-front. It’s the pretense that’s harmful. In this election, I think we witnessed how harmful it is. The media was completely out of touch with the half of this country and mislead the country.